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"Declaration of the Rights of Woman", Olympe de Gouges, 1790, p. 29 - 30
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women, Sarah Grimke, 1838, p. 30
Declaration of Rights and Sentiments of the Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention, 1848
"The Solitude of the Self," Elisabeth Cady Stanton, c. 1890, p. 30
The Woman's Bible, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, c. 1895, p. 31
A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf, c. 1920, p. 157
Modern Woman - The Lost Sex, by Lundberg and Farnham, 1940s?, p. 13 anti-feminist
feminists Della D. Cyrus and Mary McCarthy p. 13
Woman as Force in History, Mary Ritter Beard, new York, Macmillan, 1946
Adam's Rib, Ruth Herschberger, 1948, reprint New York: Harper and Row, 1970, p. 13
Women in the Modern World: Their Education and Their Dilemma, Mirra Komarovsky, Boston: Little, Brown, 1953, p. 14
The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvior, 1950s?
Women's Two Roles: Home and Work, Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956, page14
Century of Struggle, Eleanor Flexner, Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959, p. 31
American Women, report of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, 1961, p. 17
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan, 1963
Academic Women, Jessie Bernard, (University Park, Pa: Penn State University Press, 1964)
The Troublesome Helpmate, Katharine Rogers, 1966, p. 147
NOW Statement of Purpose
Thinking About Women, Mary Ellmann, New York, harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968, p. 147
The Church and the Second Sex, Mary Daly, 1968, numerous reprints
"The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm", Anne Koedt, 1968, reprinted Boston: New England Free Press, 1970
Born Female: The High Cost of Keeping Women Down, Caroline Bird, New York, David McKay, 1968, revised ed. 1970, p. 50
"Program for Feminist Consciousness-Raising," Kathie Sarachild, 1968
Handbook on Women Workers, Women's Bureau, 1969, p. 19
Women and Their Bodies, Women and Our Bodies, and finally, Our Bodies, Ourselves, Boston Women's Health Collective, 1970, reprint New York, Simon and Schuster, 1973
The Great Mother, Neuman, p. 33
The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone, New York: Morrow, 1970, p. 36
Sexual Politics, Kate Millett, 1970, reprint: Virago Press, 1985
Sisterhood Is Powerful, Robin Morgan, New York, Vingate Books, 1970
Redstockings Manifesto, c. 1970
SCUM Manifesto, Valerie Solanas, c. 1970
The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer, 1970
The First Sex, Elizabeth Gould Davis, 1971, reprint Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1972 p. 32
"Women in the Academic Marketplace," Marijean Suelzle, Berkley, Ca.: University of California, 1971
Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler, 1972, reprint New York, Avon Books, 1973 p. 139
Beyond God the Father, Mary Daly, 1973, reprinted Boston: Beacon Press, 1978
Feminism and Socialism, Linda Jenness, 1973, reprint New York: pathfinder Press, 1976
Toward a Recognition of Androgyny, Carolyn Heilbrun, 1973, p. 125
Amazon Odyssey, Ti-Grace Atkinson, New York, Links Books, 1974
Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Juliet Mitchell, 1974, p. 127
The Battered Wives of America, Del Martin, 1974
Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, Susan Brownmiller, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1975
Feminist Literary Criticism, edited by Josephine Donovan, Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky, 1975
It Changed My Life, Betty Friedan, New York: Random House, 1976
Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present, Elizabeth Pleck, 1982
Keeping the Faith, Paula Marshall, p. 151
Sex Roles and Female Oppression, Dana Densmore, Boston: New England Fress Press, no date given
"As early as 1948, in Adam's Rib, a work sparkling with humor, Ruth Hershberger dared to stake out a place for herself in the same territory as the Freudians - sexuality - in order to counter their sexual theories and dispute their right to be the arbitrators of normality. . . .
Without entirely denying the existence of the vaginal organism, Ruth Hershberger opened the way to the theories of radical feminists on clitoral organism. In 1948, however, Adam's Rib went largely unnoticed, the book was a generation ahead of its time.
Other noteworthy contributions were made by the "functionalist feminists" of the 1950s, such as Mirra Komarovsky (Women n the Modern World: Their Education and Their Dilemma), and Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein (Women's Two Roles: Home and Work)." pages 13 - 14
Regarding The Feminine Mystique: "Reacting against the feminist mystique did not necessarily mean denying certain options of femininity. Nor did it mean one sex aggressively asserting itself against the other. It meant the desire to stop being unhealthily locked into the syndrome, and to find self-fulfillment by integrating all the roles in the course of a single lifetime." p. 17
Regard male chauvinism in 1960s male radicals: "In the 1960s, the male radical, with a reputation as a fighter for justice, was acting out the same drama of power in the setting of the protest movement that the senators and congressmen had performed on the legislative stage twenty years earlier, after the Second World War." page 20
"The movement grew, and in November 1968, two hundred radical feminists, who had raveled from thirty-seven states and Canada, gathered in Chicago to hold the First National Convention of the Women's Liberation Movement. Two themes were debated: one, sexuality, with a paper delivered by Anne Koedt, "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm"; the other, a new vision of the Women's movement, sketched out in a report by Kathie Sarachild, "Program for Feminist Consciousness-Raising." " " page 21
"The catalysts of the new feminism came from three male power groups: there was the fierce antifeminism of the post-Freudian psychologists; then, the timorous protofeminism of federal officials and government agencies; and finally, the male chauvinism of the men in the radical protest movement.
Consciousness-raising has continued because of the perpetual nature of the issues involved, and analysis of these issues has gradually become much more profound. The first of these is the socioeconomic oppression of women, perceived at first as an injustice solely from an economic viewpoint, subsequently as psychological alienation through the socioeconomic determinist of motherhood, and finally as sexual discrimination exercised against the entire socioeconomic class of women.
The second issue that has retained the attention of feminist thinkers is sexuality. . . . The renewed value given to the clitoris led feminists to demand liberation in terms of sexual behavior and to affirm the clitoral orgasm as enabling women (like men) to experience sexuality independently of its reproductive function, making reproduction a matter of free choice. . . .
The third issue addressed by feminist theorists has been the cultural oppression of women." pages 23 - 24
"Just as the Declaration of Independence is the sacred test of the American nation, the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, which deliberately echoed the 1776 text, is the charter of American feminism. The analogy may have found inspiration in a celebrated example from the French Revolution, when in 1790, a woman, Olympe de Gouges, responded to the inadequacies of the Declaration of the Rights of Man by proposing a Declarations of the Rights of Woman." pages 29 - 30
"The ideological vacuum, which in hindsight was seen as the price paid for obtaining the right to vote, explained why, in 1920, the old feminism had stopped short." page 31
Regarding Beyond God the Father by Mary Daly: "Here, feminism overcomes Americanism, breaking with the traditional supersanctification of the Bible by a nation seeking to legitimize its divine right. In demystifying a book that has sometimes been interpreted as a justification for sexual discrimination and slavery, the feminism of Sarah Grimke and Elizabeth Cady Stanton remains faithful to the great American tradition of equality for all and exorcises one of the contradictions of Americanism." page 32
"In this case, the ideology is sexual politics, which Kate Millet defines as the relationship of force in which one group in society, defined by its sex, exercises general power over another group, also defined by its sex." page 38
"Whatever the seeming divergences between the feminist "historians of glory" and the matriarchy utopia, on the one hand, and the radical feminist "historian of oppression," on the other, they are not irreconcilable, and they meet on several essential principles.
Both perceive the past in terms of a relationship of sexual dialectics. . . . both perceive the relationship of sexual dialectics as the determining factor, and the feminist battle as transcending racial and class struggles. . . .
. . . But the "historians of glory" as well as the "historians of oppression" perceive the same substratum of sexual coercion which, by establishing physical advantages as an absolute value, has relegated all women collectively to an inferior status. Both viewpoints reject the claim that this status is natural, and see it as a man-made artifact." pages 41 - 42
" "The Constitution . . . represents what is tantamount to legislation without representation. . . . Women have never legally been declared persons in this country by the Supreme Court or by the Constitution." " page 48, quote taken from Wilma Scott Heide, "Women and the Law" in Women's Role in Contemporary Society, The Report of the NYC Commission on Human Rights foreword by Mayor John Lindsay, Introduction by Eleanor Holmes Norton (New York: Avon, 1972)
"Egalitarian feminist ideology vacillates constantly between the credo - a declaration of ultimate faith in the system - and the j'accuse - an accusation and a rejection of an imperfect, discriminatory reality." page 48
"Liberal feminists' overestimate of the gains achieved rests on the conviction that established institutions have a great capacity for evolution." page 49
"Paradoxically, in refusing to choose responsible spokeswomen in order to avoid creating a star system, the Women's movement encouraged an unofficial star system." page 64
"When the radical label is applied to feminism, it covers at least three principal tendencies: radical feminism, political lesbianism, and feminist socialist radicalism." page 66
"For radical feminist theorists, sexism is at the very root of patriarchal institutions." Whereas the liberal or egalitarian feminist perception of society sees merely failures in a system that is fundamentally perfectible, the radical feminist views the system itself as the incarnation of sexism, with everything being organized around intersexual relations established on the basis of power. The radical feminist theorists therefore set out to demonstrate the institutional nature of every relationship, to study the institutions thus revealed - sex, social class, family, marriage, prostitution, love, culture - and to expose the ways in which their arguments are structured." p. 67
"There is no question that the richest contribution to feminist theoretical analysis comes to us from radical feminism." page 67
"Political is obviously the key word here. In the context of relations between the sexes, everything is political: this is the fundamental postulate of radical feminist theory. . . . . Taking up the same theme, Charlotte Bunch states two interrelated propositions: "There is no private domain of a person's life that is not political, and there is no political issue that is not ultimately personal."
This synthesis operated by the radical feminists was perceived as a welcome innovation in the history of militantism." page 68
"The first necessity of any organized protest movement is to identify the oppressor. As early as 1968, Beverly Jones and Judith Brown had insisted on this priority and defined it as male chauvinism. Following their lead, the radical feminists deliberated about who was responsible for the oppression of women and came up with the answer: men are the enemy.
We identify the agents of our oppression as men. . . . All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc.) are extensions of male supremacy. . . . All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women." page 68
quote from Redstockings Manifesto in Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful, 534
" "Women's submission is not the result of brainwashing, stupidity, or mental illness, but of continual, daily pressure from men. We do not need to change ourselves, but to change men." " page 69, quote from "Redstockings Manifesto" in Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful, 534
My note: Men are not the enemy, male chauvinism is the enemy.
"For the egalitarian or liberal feminists, the pathology of oppression concerns only the oppressed woman, with the problem of culpability being effectively evaded, since blame is vaguely attributed to society or some institution. For those members of the radical feminist camp who do not subscribe to the "pro-woman" line, there are two aspects of this pathology: one affects the male who oppresses, the other the female who submits." page 70
according to Ti-Grace Atkinson "In the course of human civilization, men have simply been able to take unfair advantage of the reproductive capacity of women and turn it into a handicap." page 71
"This leads us, at this point in our study, to a second tentative conclusion for the radical feminists, in general, the proposition "men are the enemy" is aimed at man not as a biological animal but as the incarnation and perpetuation of a behavior that has become the glue binding together a sexual class.
The exception to the rule would appear to be Valerie Solanas, expressing her views in the SCUM Manifesto. It is indeed man, the biological animal that she attacks: this genetically inferior animal, resulting from a "biological accident," is said to be an "incomplete female. . . . an emotional cripple." mired in his animal nature. This pitiable creature is afflicted by "pussy envy" (a parody on "penis envy"); psychically passive, he projects his hateful passivity on women, and through the action of coitus, tries to prove that, on the contrary, his nature is active. Trying to prove the unprovable, since an active nature is possessed only by females, he is condemned to an "eternal fuck," an act of sublimation by which he defends himself from his desire to be female.
Since a man's life is a desperate search to "complete himself," that is, to become female, he attempts to do this:
by claiming as his own all female characteristics - emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc. - and projecting on women all male traits: vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc.As to the assertion that women fulfill themselves through motherhood, this is supposed by Solanas to be purely a projection of male fantasy, betraying a tenacious envy of the birth-giving function. . . .
If we examine the text more closely, we see that its analysis of the patriarchal reality is a parody. . . . . Here we have a case of absurdity being used as a literary device to expose absurdity, tat is, the absurd theory which has been used to give "scientific" legitimacy to patriarchy. To "misogyny" disguised under a pseudo-scientific mask, Solanas responds with "misandry" disguised under the same mask What about her proposal that men should quite simply be eliminated, as a way of clearing the dead weight of misogyny and masculinity? This is the inevitable conclusion of the feminist pamphlet, in the same way that Jonathan Swift's proposal that Irish children (as useless mouths) should be fed to the swine was the logical conclusion of his bitter satirical pamphlet protesting famine in Ireland. Neither of the two proposals is meant to be taken seriously, and each belongs to the realm of political fiction, or even science fiction, written in a desperate effort to arouse public consciousness." pages 73 - 74
"The proposals of radical feminists have often been distorted, lumped together and interpreted as a pure and simple rejection of sexuality. In reality, the feminist rejection expressed here concerns solely the institutionalization of sexual intercourse, as focused on reproduction and the denial of woman's right to orgasm." page 75
"Radical feminists make a distinction between the reproductive capacity and the reproductive function, seeming to base it in the fact nature, as the French feminist Evelyne Sullerot points out, provides for alternating periods of fertility and infertility, obliging us to recognize that "nature has programmed women's sexual pleasure independently fro the reproductive purpose." page 76
"For Ti-Grace Atkinson, the woman is to the fetus what the sculptor is to a work of art. For both, the right of property implies an essential freedom, the choice to destroy the work in progress or to complete it. Thus, any woman can accept donation of sperm - which becomes her property - and can decide whether or not to exercise her reproductive capacity with regard to this donation and whether or not to carry the process through to its full term. The right of property ceases at the point when the work is completed and begins its own independent existence, when the process ends of either artistic production or biological reproduction. In the latter case, this point is reached when the pregnancy reaches its full term and the fetus becomes an autonomous human being to whom the woman has chosen to give the status of child.
The woman is seen as the property owner of her reproductive capacity, over which she should have total liberty to exercise her own free will. . . . .She alleges that these laws [anti-abortion laws] violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the American Constitution for the reason that they attack the rights of women to life, liberty, and property. These laws have only one reason for their existence: to enable the patriarchy to perpetuate the categorization of women as a sexual class." pages 76 - 77
"As a "patriarchal unit," the family is seen as the site of a triple oppression of women: sexual, economic, and psychological." page 78
"As a "patriarchal unit," the family consecrates a relationship of possession. Founded on a division of labor - paid outside work for the man, unpaid domestic work for the woman - it is the site of the economic oppression of women." page 79
" "As long as you're going to have compulsive marriage and compulsive families, I think you're going to have prostitution."
This declaration from a former prostitute acknowledges the double standard of ethics that reigns over patriarchal marriage - the desire for change experienced by the man is recognized and accepted, while the same desire experienced by the woman is rendered illegitimate -as well as the more tolerant attitude of the wife who finds that, if her husband is going to cheat anyway, a prostitute is less threatening to her marriage than a mistress would be." page 81
"In virtually identical terms, Shulamith Firestone and Ti-Grace Atkinson insist on the necessity of dealing with the issue of love, since they see it as central to the oppression of women. Love, they say, has a p0olitical function, which is to persuade the oppressed one to accept her or his oppression." page 83
"This search for androgyny is equivalent to suicide since, in its unilateralness as proposed by Ti-Grace Atkinson, it consists, for the woman, of abandoning the last vestiges of her identity, an identity that has become contemptible according to the image of herself that she has internalized.
From this analysis comes the radical feminist idea that the feminist solution requires the rejection of love. . . . she does not specify whether this rejection refers only to love as it now exists in the patriarchal society, or to love in the absolute. In other words, is she denying love itself?" pages 83 - 84
According to Firestone: "As for women, their emotion is seen to be perfected by the same class phenomenon that renders men incapable of loving." page 84
and "What is destructive is blind idealization: "Thus it is not the process of love itself that is at fault, but its political, i.e. unequal power context." page 85
"As we said above, doing so demonstrated that the term man is never taken in its strictly biological sense - an interpretation which would forcibly lead to the conclusion that the heterosexual dilemma is insoluble - but rather is loaded with sociological implications, leaving the door open for hope and change." page 85
" "I believe women - and men - would like love, security, companionship, respect and a long term commitment to each other. Women rarely get much of this, in marriage or out, but we want it." " page 86, quoted from "The Marriage Question, " Patricia Mainardi
"Radical feminists are not at all interested in the "power sharing" so dear to the hearts of egalitarian feminists; instead, they are demanding an all-out effort to uproot all domination and elitism in human relations." page 90
"For once the idea of celibacy is accepted, a woman no longer will fear being abandoned, and if she is loved, it will be for herself and not as the reflection of a depersonalized, alien image. In other words, the asexuality envisioned by Dana Densmore is not a final solution but rather forms part of a survival strategy. It is a sort of sexual strike tactic in the old tradition going back to the Greek play Lysistrata, but this time used for the purpose of rescuing love." page 93
From The Hite Report: "Not only were women tired of the old mechanical pattern of "foreplay," penetration, intercourse, and ejaculation, but many also found that always having to have intercourse, knowing you will have intercourse as a foregone conclusion, is mechanical and boring." pages 93 - 94
According to lesbian feminists: "The lesbian version of feminist sisterhood is presented as the only possible way to achieve love, since lesbian love unites two equal persons, equal by virtue of the fact of their common oppression by men." page 106
". . . she [Ti-Grace Atkinson] perceives them [lesbian feminists] as having essentially a strategic value in a "buffer zone," protecting the flanks of the main feminist movement against attacks by the patriarchy in the same way that in the McCarthy era, the Communist party served as a "buffer" protecting the labor movement." page 109
"Feminist radicals (that is, feminism within radical socialism) is distinguished by double or triple allegiance: the double allegiance of whit militants to the political left and to feminism: the triple allegiance by minority women to the political Left, to the struggle for ethnic liberation, and to feminism." pages 110 - 111
"If we compare the theoretical analysis of feminist radicals with that of radical feminists, we immediately see a fundamental difference on the issue of assigning the blame for women's oppression, since the feminist radical lays the principal burden of guilt on the capitalist system." page 112
"According to them, it is not the patriarchy that changed the course of history, it is capitalism."
"This theory can be distinguished from that of radical feminists in two ways. First, it exonerates men from the charge of collective guilt inherent in them as a sexual class; at most it lays blame on the limited class of plutocrats. Second, as a corollary, it assumes that economic classes existed prior to the sexual oppression of women, the latter having arisen to serve the needs of the former, since the confinement of women to the home was conceived by husbands as a guarantee of their own paternity of their children so as to be sure they were leaving their worldly goods to their genetic heirs." page 113
"Although the feminist radicals assert that the sexual oppression of women was born out of the economic class system, they are forced to recognize that this oppression exists everywhere in the world." page 114
"According to feminist radicals, this oppression lies first of all in the relegation of women to domestic slavery, this being the least costly means found by society in the capitalist state to rid itself, as stated above, of any responsibility for the nonproductive population: children, old people, the handicapped. This relegation, in addition, gives rise to all the many aspects of the oppression of women: their exclusion from higher tasks providing more personal fulfillment, discrimination in employment, their economic dependence maintained through the nonremuneration of domestic labor, and their cultural death." page 115
"A simplistic view of radical feminist theory sums it up as follows: a refusal of love, a rejection of the dominant culture, hate for men, and separatism. In the media, this literal interpretations of these positions have attained remarkably wide distribution. We believe that this exposure has had a positive effect, in the sense that it has considerably shaken up the smugness of male chauvinists among all men, particularly on the political Left. It is thanks to the radical feminists that feminism has been able to exist as an autonomous movement, to have escaped from being cooped by socialism and to have had a universal reach.
Nevertheless, the time has come for these same radical feminists to explain their declarations and to reveal to the public that their rejection of love, culture, and men are specifically aimed at the corruption of love, the corruption of culture, and the sociologically defined behavior of men." page 123
"Androgyny in her [Carolyn Heilbrun's] meaning is not a matter of fantasizing about new kinds of sexual union or wishing to have the organs and bodily functions of the opposite sex, but rather it is the pursuit of an ideal "unlimited personality," based on the refusal to sexualize human traits or to link psychic identity with biological sex." page 126
"Zella Luria belongs to the feminist school of psychology, which also includes Phyllis Chesler, Eleanor Maccoby, and Naomi Weisstein, whose work is used as a reference by feminists of every tendency." page 128.
"Identical lists of 1222 character traits were presented to three groups of psychologists that included both men and women. The first group was asked to draw a list of characteristic traits that would be found in a clinically sane man; the second group was to do the same thing for a clinically sane woman; the third group's list was supposed to describe a clinically sane adult. When the three lists were compared, it was found that the first and third coincided perfectly, but the second and third were in total contradiction to each other. The experiment demonstrated that for these particular psychologists, believed to be representative of their colleagues, the idea of a clinically sane woman contradicted their idea of a clinically sane adult, thus lending support to the thesis that the ethic of mental health is masculine in our society.
It is easy to see what ammunition such an experiment can provide to feminists. It enables them to point to the fundamental paradox in the classic position of the psychology profession regarding women, as follows: a dependent, fearful, emotional women is not recognized as a mentally healthy adult, but she is a mentally healthy woman; conversely, a woman who has qualities defined as appropriate to a mentally healthy adult or a mentally healthy man - being enterprising, outgoing, and independent - is not a mentally healthy woman, but a neurotic." pages 130 - 131
"Whether in private therapy or a psychiatric hospital, a woman who rebels against the "normal" feminine role is treated as an anomaly and "cured" by a form of therapy that is a reflection and magnification of the very patriarchal order that the rebel is rejecting." page 132
"Germaine Greer's thesis is that women's socialization into the feminine role has resulted in their "castration." . . . .
. . . .Their full potential is to be freed, says Germaine Greer, by the reintegration in women of the libido, an energy which is not the monopoly of masculinity but is essential to every living being. The fact that Germaine Greer studies four aspects of feminine castration - body, soul, love, and hate - reaffirms the libido as a force diffused throughout every aspect of the personality. . . . .
. . . Castrated in their flesh, women have been taught to perceive sexuality as passive; therefore, their own sexuality has been distorted and denied. . . . .Hence Greer's patient cataloging of the factors which, following the whims of fashion, have intervened to modify the work of nature and to turn the female skeleton into a feminine frame: corsets, pantyhose, high heels, eurythmic gymnastics, etc.
Likewise, women's souls have been subject to castration by conditioning, which has consisted of suppressing or diverting women's energy. As Freud observed - rightly, in this case - repression consumes energy that might otherwise be expressed in creativity. In this way, women are mutilated by the destructive action of unconsumed energy, which they turn against themselves.
The perversion of love, says Greer, is the consequence of the perversion of the libido into a male monopoly and into heterosexual relationships, which are by nature sadomasochistic. The three perversions of love are altruism, egotism, and obsession. . . . Obviously, for Germaine Greer, love does not exist in the patriarchal society. . . . Greer cites, without disagreeing, Ti-Grace's brutal phrase: "Love is the victim's response to the rapist."
Perverted love engenders hate, in whose most profound depths there stagnates men's disgust for the facile and sordid sexual relationship. " page 136 - 138
Quoting Greer: "Women must learn how to question the most basic assumptions about feminine normality in order to reopen the possibilities for development which have been successively blocked off by conditioning." page 141
"In spirit, feminist androgyny theorists are in favor of integrating all the tendencies of feminism to achieve a synthesis, so as to put this synthesis into the service of women and all humanity." page 146
"The symposium presentations [U. of Kentucky, April 1973 symposium on links between feminism and literature] were subsequently published under the title Feminist Literary Criticism, edited by Josephine Donovan, and this collection should be recognized as a precious work of classification and synthesis, which attempts to resolve the dilemmas facing feminists in the matter of literary criticism." page 147
"For Katherine Rogers, for example, there is a literary tradition of misogyny, which has developed under three influences. The first was the patriarchal tendency of the Greeks to deprecate the feminine character and mind, which were presumed to be universally characteristic of the whole gender. Next came the Roman dichotomy between conjugal love and sexual passion, with its two stereotypes of the wife and mistress. . . . Virulent disparagement of women attained its paroxysm in the twentieth century, when misogyny finally dared be proclaimed openly, and for the first time, even motherhood itself was attacked. The groundwork laid by the Greeks and Romans was climaxed by the third factor, Christian asceticism and the Christian hostility toward women expressed from the earliest centuries, as in the writings of Saint Paul, who associated women with forbidden carnal desires and blamed them for enticing men into committing sins of the flesh." p. 150
"Katharine Rogers and Kate Millett agree in recognizing that every step in social or political progress for women is accompanied by a corresponding crescendo of misogyny in literature." page 153
"The lesson learned in the reading is, in fact, to bring a critical judgment regarding the effects of sexist manipulation, and the message is that an entire sex has, until now, been subjected to such manipulation." page 155
"The development of a backlash, not necessarily composed of women, is a measure of the success of the Women's movement, whose impact can be evaluated in proportion to the combativeness of its adversaries." page 178
"In this context, each women who achieves self-realization is contributing her bit to building feminism, since each newcomer who discovers that she can act on her own is a fledgling militant." page 183
"In March 1973, the group known as the Feminists launched a graffiti campaign against New York rapists, publicly displaying their full names and home addresses. This was done less to incite vigilante actions of summary justice than to end the anonymity which had allowed repeated offenders to molest women with impunity." page 194
"In the crowd, members of a group called the Men's Liberation Movement showed their approval with signs reading Men Are Not Just Success Objects (echoing the familiar feminist slogan, Women Are Not Just Sex Objects)." page 197
"In the eyes of politicians, NOW was a frighteningly militant organization, incarnating their worst nightmares of feminism. We see this factor as both positive and necessary, in that NOW's independence from traditional politics enabled it to retain its uniqueness as a feminist organization, and was the only way to guarantee the support of the radical minority of feminists, whose presence in the ranks was, we believe, the best guarantee against the movement's being co-opted." page 201
"The National Organization for Women outshone itself with another initiative: the demand for extension of the original seven-year deadline for ratification of the ERA. Credit is due to NOW for the legal research regarding the constitutionality of the extension measure. Investigations revealed that no clause in the Constitution imposes a time limit for ratification; this practice began only with the Eighteenth Amendment. They also argued that although a time limit was mentioned in the preamble to the ERA, there was none in the text of the amendment itself; furthermore, since this time limit had been set by Congress, then Congress had the authority to modify it. Having done its homework, the feminist lobby threw all its weight into the battle and carried off a new success, since the extension of the deadline was voted in by a comfortable majority of 233 to 189 in the House of Representatives, and by 60 to 39 in the Senate." page 211 - Eventually we can extend the deadline again, as soon as the additional few states for ratification are lined up, and get the ERA passed, even if it takes 100 years.
"The first publication [of the women's liberation movement] I have found, Voice of the Women's Liberation Movement, launched in March 1968 by Jo Freeman, served to unite radical feminists during the twelve months it lasted and to inspire the creation of other publications, through well-known channels among activists." page 223
Regarding self-defense, martial arts, training for women: "The theory was, "Rape will only stop when it becomes dangerous for a man to attack a woman." " page 234
"Sisterhood is blooming; springtime will never be the same." page 248
Reason why it was so hard to get women's business up and going - after inability to get credit: "The second was women's own socialization, which had led them to believe the myths and be convinced of their own lack of real value; undervaluing themselves, they also undervalued their products, and did not sell them at a high enough price." page 250
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